In one of my first ever blog posts in 05 i was examining why newspapers were unaware of the very own disconnect with their geographic community.

In that post I defined news simply as events that matter. Part of the function for journalism and bloggers alike, then, is to answer: what is it that matters, to whom does it matter, how much does it matter, and why.

Note that nowhere in that equation is “location” a factor.

This is why Im also very passionate about covering international news on your local site and making it relevant ( I ‘d agree wholeheartedly with Kroll’s post above).

So the what and where are a lot less important now than the why and to whom and how much. Newspapers dont — and wont — get that.

As others have posted , communities increasingly gather around issues or interests. Even your neighborhood association or city council district is driven by issues and problems for that location, rather than some perceived inherent birthright magically bestowed by virtue of its GPS coordinates alone.

Fabulous blog, Mindy, btw - just now discovered it. Itll be a regular watch, because Im very interested in how journalism needs to be taught these days.

Magazines have been serving communities ever since the Journal des Scavans (or whatever the latest research has identified as the protoype magazine) and they continue to do so. These communities usually have no geographical proximity, but a very strong proximity of interest.

Specialised websites also serve communities. I could cite my own use of GuitarNet, where people who have never met each other face to face happily share problems, solutions, anecdotes, advice. There are thousands of similar sites and a couple of the comments above reflect that accurately.

None of the above share anything other than interest and (usually) goodwill. There is no explicit “civic duty” or any other formal commitment. Shirky is exactly right - audience is not the same as community and just having a physical presence in a geographical community
does not guarantee you either an audience or a community.

Civic duty, community and media are all tied together in ways I’ll be chewing on a bit more through the next few weeks.

I think newspapers have always been at the center of community, but at some point we lost that ideal.

What really blows my mind is how this community swing is happening in the digital arena much like what was described in The Fourth Turning and Millennials Rising by Neil How and William Strauss, as well as their subsequent surveys of college students.